USS Hornet (CV-8), the seventh U.S. Navy vessel of that name, was a . Commissioned a month before the Pearl Harbor attack, the ship spent three months in the waters around Norfolk, training and acquiring modern aircraft, before being dispatched to the Pacific in March 1942.
In April 1942, the ship, part of a task force that also included her sister ship USS Enterprise, launched the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, then sortied in mid-May toward the South Pacific, before being abruptly recalled to Hawaii to participate in the Battle of Midway in June. After the victory at Midway, while the Pacific Fleet's other three carriers went south to support the early August invasion of Guadalcanal and Tulagi, in the Solomon Islands, Hornet was retained in Hawaii in reserve. This did not last; in late August, she was sent to join the other carriers, a move that proved necessary, as the other vessels, one by one, were disabled. By late September, Hornet was the only American fleet carrier active in the Pacific.
Hornet spent most of her time in the South Pacific patrolling the waters east of Guadalcanal, to help keep sea lanes open and offer general support. On 15 September, she was present when a Japanese submarine sank the carrier Wasp and scored hits on two other warships. On 5 October 1942, her task force sailed west to attack Japanese shipping and air facilities near the southeast end of Bougainville (the Buin-Faisi-Tonolai Raid). Later that month, at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, she was irreparably damaged by enemy torpedo and dive bombers. Faced with an approaching Japanese surface force, Hornet was abandoned and later torpedoed and sunk by approaching Japanese destroyers. Hornet was in service for one year and six days, and was the last U.S. fleet carrier ever sunk by enemy fire. For these actions, she was awarded four service stars and a citation for the Doolittle Raid in 1942, and her Torpedo Squadron 8 received a Presidential Unit Citation for extraordinary heroism for its performance at the Battle of Midway.
In January 2019, the wreckage of the vessel was located near the Solomon Islands.
Construction and commissioning
Because of the limit on aggregate aircraft carrier tonnage included in the Washington Naval Treaty and subsequent London treaties, the United States had intended to build two Yorktown-class aircraft carriers and use the remaining allocated tonnage for a smaller, revised version of the same design, which eventually became . With war looming in Europe and the repudiation of the naval limitation treaties by Japan and Italy, the Navy's General Board decided to lay down a third carrier of the Yorktown design immediately - followed by the first carrier of the succeeding Essex class (CV-9). When the design was finalized, authorization from Congress came in the Naval Expansion Act of 1938.
Hornet had a length of at the waterline and overall. She had a beam of at the waterline, overall, with a draft of as designed and at full load. She displaced at standard load and at full load. She was designed for a ship's crew consisting of 86 officers and 1,280 men and an air complement consisting of 141 officers and 710 men.
She was powered by nine Babcock & Wilcox boilers providing steam at and to four Parsons Marine geared steam turbines, each driving its own propeller. The turbines were designed to produce a total of , giving her a range of at a speed of . She was designed to carry of fuel oil and of aviation fuel (avgas). Her designed top speed was . During sea trials, she produced and reached .
Hornet was equipped with eight /38 caliber dual-purpose guns and 16 /75 caliber antiaircraft (AA) guns in quadruple mounts (four guns operating together). Originally, she had 24 M2 Browning machine guns, but these were replaced in January 1942 with 30 20-mm Oerlikon AA cannons. An additional quad mount was added later at her bow and two more 20 mm AA guns were added for a total of 32 mounts. In addition, her athwartships hangar-deck aircraft catapult was removed. In June 1942, following the battle of Midway, Hornet had a new CXAM radar installed atop her tripod mast, and her SC radar was relocated to her main mast. Unlike her sisters, Hornets tripod mast and its signal bridge were not enclosed when the CXAM was installed, making her unique among the three ships.
Hornet had an armor belt that was thick on a backing of 30-pound (0.75-inch/19 mm) special treatment steel (STS). The flight and hangar decks were unarmored, though the protective deck was 60-pound (1.5-inch/38 mm) STS. Bulkheads had armor, while the conning tower had splinter protection only, in contrast with her sisters' armor on the sides with on top. The steering gear had protection on the sides with splinter protection on the deck.
Her flight deck was , and her hangar deck was and high. She had three aircraft elevators, each with a lifting capacity of . She had two flight-deck and one hangar-deck hydraulic catapults equipped with the Mark IV Mod 3A arresting gear with a capability of and . She was designed to host a carrier air group of 18 fighters, 18 bombers, 37 scout planes, 18 torpedo bombers, and six utility aircraft.
Hornet was laid down on 25 September 1939 by Newport News Shipbuilding of Newport News, Virginia, and was launched on 14 December 1940, sponsored by Annie Reid Knox, wife of Secretary of the Navy Frank M. Knox. She was commissioned at Naval Station Norfolk on 20 October 1941, with Captain Marc A. Mitscher in command.
Service history
Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hornet trained out of Norfolk. A hint of a future mission occurred on 2 February 1942, when Hornet departed Norfolk with two Army Air Forces North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers on deck. Once at sea, the planes were launched to the surprise and amazement of Hornets crew. Her men were unaware of the meaning of this experiment. Hornet returned to Norfolk, prepared to leave for combat, and sailed for the West Coast on 4 March via the Panama Canal.
Doolittle Raid, April 1942
Hornet arrived at Naval Air Station Alameda, California, on 20 March 1942 with her own planes on the hangar deck. By midafternoon on 1 April, she loaded 16 B-25s on the flight deck, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle, 70 United States Army Air Corps officers, and 64 enlisted men reported aboard. In company of her escort, Hornet departed Alameda on 2 April under sealed orders. That afternoon, Captain Mitscher informed his men of their mission, a bombing raid on Japan.
Eleven days later, Hornet joined the aircraft carrier at Midway, and Task Force 16 turned toward Japan. With Enterprise providing combat air patrol cover, Hornet was to steam deep into enemy waters. Originally, the task force intended to proceed to within of the Japanese coast, but on the morning of 18 April, a Japanese patrol boat, No. 23 Nitto Maru, sighted the American task force. sank the patrol boat. Amid concerns that the Japanese had been made aware of their presence, Doolittle and his raiders launched prematurely from out, instead of the planned . Because of this decision, none of the 16 planes made it to their designated landing strips in China. After the war, Tokyo was found to have received the Nitto Marus message in a garbled form and the Japanese ship was sunk before it could get a clear message through to the Japanese mainland.
As Hornet came about and prepared to launch the bombers, which had been readied for take-off the previous day, a gale of more than churned the sea with crests. Heavy swells, which caused the ship to pitch violently, shipped sea and spray over the bow, wet the flight deck, and drenched the deck crews. The lead plane, commanded by Colonel Doolittle, had only of flight deck, while the last B-25 hung its twin rudders far out over the fantail. Doolittle, timing himself against the rise and fall of the ship's bow, lumbered down the flight deck, circled Hornet after take-off, and set course for Japan. By 09:20, all 16 were airborne, heading for the first American air strike against the Japanese home islands.
Hornet brought her own planes on deck, as Task Force 16 steamed at full speed for Pearl Harbor. Intercepted broadcasts, both in Japanese and English, confirmed at 14:46 the success of the raids. Exactly one week to the hour after launching the B-25s, Hornet sailed into Pearl Harbor. The Tokyo raid being the Hornets mission was kept an official secret for a year. Until then, President Roosevelt referred to the ship from which the bombers were launched only as "Shangri-La." Two years later, the Navy gave this name to an aircraft carrier.
Hornet steamed from Pearl Harbor to aid and on 30 April at the Battle of the Coral Sea, though the battle ended before she arrived. On 4 May, Task Force 16 crossed the equator, the first time ever for Hornet. Hornet, alongside Enterprise, executed a feint towards Nauru and Banaba (Ocean) Islands, which caused the Japanese to cancel their operation to seize the two islands. She returned to Hawaii on 26 May, and sailed again two days later to help repulse an expected Japanese assault on Midway.
Battle of Midway, June 1942
On 28 May 1942, Hornet and Task Force 16 steamed out of Pearl Harbor heading for Point "Luck", an arbitrary spot in the ocean roughly northeast of Midway, where they would be in a flank position to ambush Japan's mobile strike force of four frontline aircraft carriers, the Kidō Butai. Japanese carrier-based planes were reported headed for Midway in the early morning of 4 June. Hornet, Yorktown, and Enterprise launched aircraft, just as the Japanese carriers struck their planes below to prepare for a second attack on Midway. Hornets dive bombers followed an incorrect heading and did not find the enemy fleet. Several bombers and all of the escorting fighters were forced to ditch when they ran out of fuel attempting to return to the ship; 15 torpedo bombers of Torpedo Squadron 8 (VT-8) found the Japanese ships and attacked. They were met by overwhelming fighter opposition about out, and with no escorts to protect them, they were shot down. Ensign George H. Gay, USNR, was the only survivor of 30 men.
Further attacks from Enterprise and Yorktowns torpedo bombers proved equally disastrous, but succeeded in forcing the Japanese carriers to keep their decks clear for combat air patrol operations, rather than launching a counterattack against the Americans. Japanese fighters were shooting down the last of the torpedo bombers over when dive bombers of Enterprise and Yorktown attacked, causing enormous fires aboard the three other Japanese carriers, ultimately leading to their loss. Hiryū was hit late in the afternoon of 4 June by a strike from Enterprise and sank early the next morning. Hornets aircraft, launching late due to the necessity of recovering Yorktowns scout planes and faulty communications, attacked a battleship and other escorts, but failed to score hits. Yorktown was lost to combined aerial and submarine attack.
Hornets aircraft attacked the fleeing Japanese fleet on 6 June and assisted in sinking the heavy cruiser , damaging a destroyer, and leaving the heavy cruiser heavily damaged and on fire. The attack by Hornet on the Mogami ended one of the great decisive battles of naval history. Midway Atoll was saved as an important base for American operations into the Western Pacific Ocean. Of greatest importance was the crippling of the Japanese carrier strength, a severe blow from which the Imperial Japanese Navy never fully recovered. The four large carriers took with them to the bottom about 250 naval aircraft and a high percentage of the most highly trained and experienced Japanese aircraft maintenance personnel. The victory at Midway was a decisive turning point in the War in the Pacific.